Not Your Average Konoha Academy Graduate
by Diresquirrel
Summary: The castle just collapsed and it wasn't my fault. Really. Can't a guy have a beachside vacation in peace? If you don't know, I'm Naruto Uzumaki. I'm a wizard. Here's my card. And for the last time: no, I don't do love potions.
1. Chapter 1: Rubeus Hagrid he isn't

The castle just collapsed and it wasn't my fault.

Really.

All I wanted to do was to go home, but that damn idiot couldn't leave me alone. It's bad enough when the mailman laughs at the sign on my office door, but can't a guy have a vacation without everything being shot to hell?

And that was when the acid breathing demon snakes jumped out of the rubble and started chasing after me. This was _so_ not my day.

If you don't know, I'm Naruto Uzumaki.

I'm a wizard.

Yeah, yeah, I've heard it all: a freak, a cop-out, couldn't make it as a ninja, yadda yadda yadda. I'll have you know that I went to the Konoha Academy and did quite well, thank you very much. I've even got a business card:

**Naruto Uzumaki – Wizard**

_Lost Items Found. Paranormal Investigations._

_Consulting. Advice. Reasonable Rates._

_No Love Potions, Endless Purses, Parties or other entertainment._

I'm also an inspector with the Konoha Police Department and I freelance a bit, (working for the state does _NOT_ pay well). I know, most people want to know about the ninjas with the wiggly hand jives that summon up chakra for Elemental Paper-Rock-Scissors, but that's not me. Unlike some Konoha Academy graduates, I got passing grades in chemistry. No, my talents fall in other areas which unfortunately lead to trouble. I was here for a little vacation. I wanted to see the sights, play some games, hang out on the beach. But as usual, the people at the travel agency are a bunch of dirty, rotten liars.

Now if I could only lose these acid breathing demon snakes.

It's days like these that make me wonder how I ended up like this.

* * *

><p>Years Ago...<p>

I remember back when I left the orphanage. I was about four or so. Now, while I wasn't exactly well liked, I wouldn't say it was violent, more of a pervasive passive aggression towards me. Pretty much instantly I was given an apartment in an average neighborhood. The Old Man set it up for me, nice place. But that's not what this story is about. This is about becoming a wizard.

You see, most parents discouraged other kids from playing with me, so I didn't have many (read "any") friends in those days except for my favorite eatery, a friendly barkeep and the Old Man, so when I had free time (and boy, did I have free time), I used to spend it playing pranks around town or in the parks exploring.

There was this one particular park that wasn't so much a park or a training ground as it was an unintentional memorial. You see, this part of town was pretty well abandoned after it burned after the last war when some big fox attacked, leading to the events that would bring me right there. As such, there was a lot of new growth, partial house ruins and a whole bunch of stuff lying around. It was there, in amongst some forgotten cellars and rubble, I found a skull.

A skull, you say? Not a big surprise in a ninja Village, you say? Well, in this case it wasn't really the skull that was important as who was living in it. I remember the eyes lit up and for some reason it seemed to grin.

"Hey there!" it said.

"Hi," I said, not quite sure what to make of a talking skull. "I'm Naruto."

"Hey, kid, my name's Bob, or at least that's what Harry called me, and it's worked well for a few others, so I might as well keep it," said Bob, not explaining who Harry was or why people would call a skull "Bob" in the first place. It seemed like a silly name to me at the time.

"WOW!" I said with childish amazement. "I've never met a talking skull before."

"Well now you have!" Bob said with what seemed like a smile. "So what do you do around here?"

"I'm just a kid," I said. "I went exploring and found you and a box of candles that somehow didn't melt in the fire, some silvery dust in a bag, a purple felt bag with a bunch of strange shaped dice in bright colors, a bunch of books with monsters on the covers, a-"

"That's okay kid, you don't need to tell me everything about it," Bob told me. I was a bit excitable back then. "Why don't you pick it up and we'll go over it when we get back to your folks' place."

The emotions that statement provoked must have shown up on my face because he quickly changed his tune.

"No parents, kid? Where do you live?" Bob asked me.

"The Old Man gave me a flat," I explained. "We could go there?"

"Sounds great, just remember to bring everything with you, okay?" Bob said, glancing his eyes towards the pile of stuff. I tried to carry it all at once, but it wasn't working, so I took off my shirt and tied it around the books, the skull, the bags, the candles and all the other trinkets and nicknacks hidden away in the cellar chest. I'd later figure out that something had protected the box and cellar I'd found from whatever fire that taken the house, not that it had done anything against weather, gravity and time. I was about half way home when the sky opened up and the rains came down. I got back to my house shirtless, sopping wet, dragging about half the storm in with me. I tossed the bundle on the table, getting a slightly outraged noise from the skull.

"Sorry," I said, quickly untying the knots I'd bound my shirt into carrying it home.

"I'm a delicate spirit, I have my housing needs," Bob said in a chiding voice. "So, this is your place. Not bad kid."

"I know," I said with a smile. "The Old Man got it for me. I've even got my own refrigerator and everything!"

I wasn't sure how, but I could tell that Bob was giving me an incredulously raised eyebrow in classic Spock fashion. And I know Star Trek because Bob told me all about it, but I've never gotten to see it. It's one of a lot of things that Bob talks about that I hadn't seen then and most of them I haven't seen since. Cars, trains, gas pumps, science fiction and other cool things. I've seen a few later on, but Bob says that even now, they're nothing like he remembers.

"What?" I asked.

"How can you use that?" Bob asked.

"I open it up and put things I want to say cold inside," I said, looking at the skull like he just told me the sky was fuchsia.

"No, it's got electronics, how are you using it?" Bob asked.

"What do you mean?" I said, granted I was only four, but in hindsight I was a bit of an idiot back then.

"Kid, you're putting out more magic than most experienced wizards," Bob said. "That thing should be fried, your TV sparking and your radio shitting the bed."

"You said a naughty word!" I said pointing at him with a scandalized voice. Granted at four, if he'd said "poop," I'd have been laughing my ass off. One thing the old man had instilled in me was that there were certain words you just didn't say in public. The Old Man was nice, but man, he could get pretty upset if you did certain things around him. Painting his office orange was one of them, but that's a story for another time.

Bob rolled his eyes at me.

"But I'm guessing that this means that Magic's changed again," he said.

"Magic?" I asked. I'd heard about it on cartoons and children's shows, or fairy tales or the like, but everyone said it wasn't real.

"Yeah, life creates it, makes it grow and all that crap," he told me. "You've got it, kid, you've got it in buttloads."

"Ew!"

"Relax kid, it's just an expression," Bob criticized. Bob went on to explain that every so often Magic changes. In centuries past, Magic made dairy products go bad, or scare cows, or, as Bob last remembered it, it fried electronics like you were blinking. Sometime between then and now it changed to something else: unless you live out in the boonies, fossil fuels don't burn for crap. That's why all our tech is chakra or electrically based with a few chemical based propellant things here and there. Hell, even the one car I saw was fueled by burning alcohol. All our tech is specialized, high demand, low supply equating mucho moola. Bob talks about how at one point, we'd get these things made in big factories, but since everybody's using magic and that screws with fossil fuels, it's pretty hard to make the parts in mass production. But once again, that's another story.

"So, Naruto, if you want to learn how, I can teach you," Bob told me. "It's not that hard starting out and you need some control. I can give you tips on that. You can be a Wizard, kid."

Well, I was four and while I'd always wanted to be Hokage and a ninja, it wasn't everyday you got the chance to be an honest to goodness wizard. After about two seconds of careful thought, I agreed. Immediately afterward, Bob started in on magical theory.

"I didn't know you meant right now!" I protested.

"Why not?" Bob asked me. "Now's as good a time as any!"

"Okay, fine," I said. Soon though, I was deep in the books I'd found with Bob, although he told me to leave the Player's Handbook, the Dungeon Master's Guide and the Monster Manual for later. That was about when Bob realized I couldn't read.

He sighed the sigh of the long suffering.

"I guess we'll start at the beginning then," he said.


	2. Chapter 2: Ancient Spirits of Evil

Two weeks later I was back to my old routine as far as anyone else could tell. Playing pranks, doing dirty deeds dirt cheap and being a general nuisance to the general populace of Konoha. And of course, eating excessive amounts of Ramen. It's the food of the gods, don't let anyone tell you otherwise. Believe it.

"Little Naruto, well, well," Teuchi said. As I pulled myself onto a stool. "Haven't seen you for a while. How have you been?"

"I've been good," I said. "I made a friend."

Teuchi's eyes widened slightly, but it wasn't really a negative surprise, mind you; he was glad  
>I had a friend, but he was also aware of what had happened when I tried to make friends with other kids.<p>

"Oh, and what's your friend's name?" he asked.

"Bob," I said with a smile. "He's really smart. He's teaching me all sorts of stuff."

"That's good," Teuchi said. "And where does your friend live?"

"He moved in with me," I replied. "He's really old and said I should take him home."

Now, this would be the part that set alarm bells off in the Supplier of Rameny Goodness's head. Truth be told, if someone told me now what I told Teuchi back then, I'd probably come to the same conclusion. However, Bob, pervert he may be, is certainly, most certainly, _not_ a pedophile, and wouldn't be even if he did have the equipment. This is the start of a major confusion of epic proportions and hilarity, if you look back on it, but was a bit traumatizing at the time.

"Yeah," I said between bowls, "Bob-sensei's teaching me all about stuff. I'm starting to read!"

"That's great Naruto," Teuchi said. "And what kind of things is he having you read?"

"I've got this big book and he's teaching me all about Ma-" I covered my mouth with my hands. Bob was quite careful to get me to NOT TALK ABOUT MAGIC CLUB (first rule, no joke). "Oh, I'm not supposed to talk about that. It's supposed to be a secret."

This would be continuing and increasing the confusion, if you didn't already suspect. When little, impressionable boys start talking about making friends with old people who make them keep secrets, it raises some eyebrows. I have to say this speaks pretty damn highly of old man Teuchi's character. Most any other adult at the time, save for the Old Man and maybe Jiraya and Tsunade if they were around, would have just brushed it off. Teuchi just got this dark little smile and told me to play with his daughter while he took care of some business.

"Okay!" and I went off to play with Ayame.

* * *

><p>Now, I wasn't there for this next part, but I got it from other sources later on.<p>

While I was playing some game with Ayame, Teuchi, at a rather determined pace for a civilian, marched right up to the tower and up the stairs to the Old Man's office. He waited impatiently, tapping his foot and slipped in the door the moment it opened, ignoring the calls of the secretary.

"I thought you were keeping an eye on him!" Teuchi demanded to the Hokage, he's the guy I call Old Man, if you didn't already guess.

"Teuchi? What are you talking about?" Sarutobi asked in confusion both at the statement and the Ramen Man's sudden appearance in his office. The other Jonin in the room looked at the two of them with confusion.

"Naruto! Who else?" Teuchi growled, sending shivers up the newly promoted Jonin's spines. You wouldn't think a guy like him could be that scary, but he manages quite well. He then went into detail explaining what I told him earlier and low and behold, they came to the same conclusion. So the Jonin, ANBU, Hokage and Ramen-Man (Greatest Super-Hero _Ever_!) bustled right over to my place while I played with Ayame. Now, granted I didn't find out about this part for years, but I had naively allowed Bob free reign of my apartment. And what do perverted intellect spirits do when the kids are away? Watch pay-per-view porn on my cable apparently.

In hindsight I'm glad the Old Man jumped to the conclusion, because it would have been hellishly hard to explain that on my cable bill otherwise at four years old.

You see, Bob is tied to the skull, but it isn't his skull and it doesn't have to be his home. He can live in just about anything of the right size and space. He can manipulate people, read books and apparently turn on the TV and all sorts of stuff, but he doesn't have a real body. He says he needs to be back in his skull by sunrise, but even now I'm iffy on what that does to him if he's late. Probably shouldn't push it, just in case. Anyway, Bob was watching porn while he inhabited my TV. To them there wasn't anything or anyone in the room.

So that was when they sent out the guards looking for "an old pervert named Bob." Luckily for us both, I hadn't left the skull right out on the table for everyone to see, as that would have raised a few other flags in the Old Man's head.

Anyway, I received a very stern talking to about letting strange men I've never met into my apartment. Being all of four years old, I just nodded, not realizing they were talking about Bob the Skull.

* * *

><p>Years past and I forgot to mention Bob again until it was time for me to enter the Ninja Academy.<p>

"It's almost time," the Old Man said with a proud look on his face.

"Time for what?" I asked as I munched on some inarizushi (which the Old Man usually gave me for my birthday or other special occasions after we went out for Ramen).

"Time for you to join the Ninja Academy," he said with a warm, grandfatherly smile. I looked down, then looked up at him with a puzzled look.

"I'm not sure I wanna be a ninja anymore," I said, shocking the hell out of the Old Man.

"You don't? But I thought you wanted to be Hokage?" he asked.

"Well..." I began. "I did at first, but now I think I'm going to be a wizard instead."

"A wizard?" he asked with much confusion.

"Yup!" I said with a foxy little grin, as most of my grins were back then. "Bob says I've got talent."

"Excuse me, Bob?"

"Yeah, he says I can be a really good wizard," I said with the inarizushi in my mouth (not as good as ramen, but pretty damn good). "He taught me to read and everything!"

"You can read already?"

"Yeah," I said, nodding furiously. "I know all sorts of stuff. Like adding, and subtracting and I know up to times nine!"

The Old Man patted me on the head in his usual grandfatherly way, but I could tell he was proud of me.

"So what does this Bob look like?"

"He's a skull with glowy eyes!" I announced with a winning smile, giving him a big thumbs up. Why can I say? I was like 6 or so. Little did I know, but this was when the Old Man made some gesture and sent an ANBU, who I have come to suspect was a certain silver-haired, one-eyed jonin pervert, back to my apartment who ransacked the place and stole Bob's skull. Luckily for Bob, he was in my TV again, watching a swimsuit competition, so he didn't get completely stolen. For some reason, for weeks after that, Bob was talking about a white haired kindred spirit; however this was also when he started demanded books of a certain orange covered series as payment for his help with my magical studies, so it's not all good.

After we finished my inarizushi, we went back to the tower. I waited outside while the Old Man talked to that dirty thieving ANBU.

"So what did you find?" the Old Man asked. The masked pervert dropped a skull on the desk.

"It's a real skull, but it's damn old," Kakashi reported. "No scarring, chipping or signs of decay from being buried. Comparing to what I've seen, I'd say 'Bob the Skull' is older than the village."

"And your other eye?" the Old Man asked.

"It's got some sort of Chakra attached to it, but there was so much chakra around that apartment that I couldn't tell the source," Kakashi replied.

"But was it anything like _that_ chakra?" the Old Man asked. Kakashi shook his head.

"No, I don't think it has anything to do with the Fox," the masked pervert replied. "Totally different feel. If anything it reminds me more of Jiraiya."

* * *

><p>Meanwhile, Danzo (<em>Ancient-Spirits-of-Evil-Make-Me-Mumm-Ra<em>) Shimura was glaring at me with his one eye as he waited impatiently in the waiting room outside the Old Man's office. I glared petulantly back up at him. See, everybody thinks I'm an idiot, but you can't be an idiot if you're a wizard. Wizard comes from the same root as Wise, meaning that it's the knowledge that makes you the wizard, not the magical power. So, I knew he was up to something, so I did my little trick that Bob was telling me all about and tugged on my magic, bringing the Imhotep impersonator's words to my ear.

"You, little demon, will be mine," he muttered, glaring at me with his one eye. He clearly didn't think I could hear him, but I did. "A perfect weapon going to waste. Just another one of Sarutobi's failures. Useless!"

Needless to say I didn't like being called a demon, and I didn't like how he was claiming possession over me, and I didn't like this jerk talking bad about the Old Man. So I punched him. Of course, I used a special punch he wasn't expecting, enhancing my punch with some extra power stored up in the rings I found in another bag in that same box. Since I hadn't released them since I put them on about a year ago (not to mention that they store kinetic energy based on the wearer's movement and I was a hyperactive four year old when I put them on), Clone-Tut went flying through the doors, over Kakashi and the Old Man's heads, out the window. He bounced off one roof top and skidded to a stop on the next.

Heads watched as he flew out the window, then turned back to me with wide incredulous eyes.

"He was being mean to me!" I said pointing out the window, but that's when my ADD kicked in and I noticed a very familiar skull on the Old Man's desk. "Hey, what are you doing with Bob?"

"Naruto," the Old Man said in his careful voice. I'd heard him use the voice before. It's the voice he uses when I play a prank or someone does something really stupid that he doesn't approve of. Me? Not a big fan of that voice. "How did you punch Danzo like that?"

I grinned and held up my hand with my rings. "These store kuk-uh-kin-uh-ken-ah-kan Connecticut energy. And I can release it all at once, and so wham!"

The masked pervert gave me a little eye-smile and nodded. "You wouldn't happen to mean kinetic energy, would you?"

"Yeah! That's it!" I replied pointing at him before turning back to the Old Man. "And the Boris Karloff rip off was talking about how I was a demon, and I didn't like that, and then he said I would be his, and you told me not to talk to strange old men or to get away from them, so I think he must have been what you were talking about, and then he called me a weapon and you a failure, but you're Hokage and so that wasn't true, so I gave him a whammy!" I punched my fist into my palm for emphasis.

"Can you punch Kakashi here the same way?" The Old Man asked, getting a shocked look from Kakashi who started to back away from me with a worried expression. The masked ANBU glanced out the window to where the Mummy was getting back up with the help of some strange ANBU with "root" on their masks. The Mummy looked like he was in quite a bit of pain and suffering.

"Nope, it needs to charge back up," I said. The masked pervert relaxed quite a bit. The Old Man leaned back in his chair and pretended to stroke his goatee. It's what he did to cover up a smile, but I knew him better than most, so I grinned. He was intrigued with what had happened. I knew he wanted to know more.

"I think," he began, "it is time for me to meet Bob."


	3. Chapter 3: Perverts and Potions

**Chapter 3: Perverts and Potions**

* * *

><p>"So, Old Man, this is Bob, he's teaching me magic," I said back at my apartment, holding up the now inhabited skull for him to see. "Bob, this is the Hokage, he's the boss of the town."<p>

"Hey, how's it going?" Bob said. Bob glanced towards me. "Kid, I thought we were going ixnay on the agic-may."

"What?" I asked. Bob had forgotten to teach me Pig Latin, a mistake that was quickly rectified.

"We weren't going to tell anyone about the magic," Bob explained.

"But I want to be a wizard like Harry!" I protested.

"I have no problem with Naruto being a wizard," the Old Man said. "And we'll keep it between the four of us: me, Naruto, you, and my ANBU."

"Fair enough," said Bob.

"We were wondering what you were," the Old Man stated as he slipped into a chair at my table.

"I'm an intellect spirit," Bob replied before going into exactly what that entailed.

"So you have no intention of harming Naruto or Konoha," the Hokage asked after listening to the explanation.

"Well, not as long as the kid doesn't," Bob replied. "If I'm picked up by someone who doesn't like Konoha, then I work for them."

"No loyalty?"

"Not in my nature," Bob said with what I learned was his equivalent of a shrug. "Loyalty is something for humans and dogs. I exist for knowledge. Who I work for doesn't matter, although I do tend to prefer certain masters to others. I'm a reflection of who I work for."

"How interesting," the Old Man mused. "Now could you give me a quick rundown of exactly what a wizard can do?"

The brief explanation of wizardry had wheels turning in the Old Man's head.

"Thank you, Bob," he said. "We'll talk again."

He got up and started towards the door before pausing to look down at me.

"I've thought about what you were saying, Naruto," he said. "About becoming a wizard?"

I looked up eagerly.

"Well, even Wizards need to attend the Academy," the Hokage told me. I cheered for joy, not realizing how boring the Academy could be at times.

* * *

><p>The Academy was boring.<p>

Not just a little, I mean mind-numbingly, brain-meltingly _boring_.

There were all these kids who wanted to be Ninjas, so they all showed up and they all tried doing what they were doing, which was basically sucking up to the teachers. After the first week of "this is how you call up your chakra" I was about ready to go find a Mummy to hit again. While he wouldn't go flying as hard or as far as the last time, it would still feel satisfying. About the only thing that kept me interested was the history lessons. Bob said that "those who forget the past are condemned to repeat it" so he told me to pay attention to History and to the girls. I wasn't too sure why he said that second part back then, but it sure paid off in the end.

As for History, Bob made sure I wasn't about to make the same mistakes that others did. Did you know history is filled with complete and total douchebags? I'm serious, from Madara Uchiha to Hanzo the Salamander, the vast majority of people the Hokage's have dealt with have been total douchebags. So I paid attention so I wouldn't make the same mistakes as the douchebags of the past. Granted I made plenty of my own mistakes, but that doesn't mean I can't learn from others' examples.

But aside from that and a few other things like geography and sealing, the Academy was a snooze fest. I mean, why learn how to make a little illusion of yourself when you can make an illusion off a big friggan dragon or something? Well, the first time I did that (using something Bob calls "Veils;" I'm not too good at them, but I can pull one off for a quick distraction) the other students were terrified and the instructors weren't too pleased, although I could tell one with a scar across his nose found it funny and was trying not to laugh. Iruka's a good guy.

* * *

><p>Now, when it came to Chakra manipulation, Bob said that magic and chakra were basically two names for the same beast. Or rather, that's what we thought at first. Chakra's a blending of mental and physical energies. People are made up of three things: the spirit, which is where the mind resides; the body, which is where physical energy comes from; and the soul, which is a whole nother story. Ninjas, with their hand wigglies, use both physical and mental energy simultaneously. As a Wizard, Bob taught me how to use the two independent of each other. Luckily for me, Chakra control exercises worked well for me as well.<p>

If there's one thing I've got a problem with, it's control. Sure, I've got access to the great and terrible powers of the universe, but it's a whole lot easier for me to blow up a mountain than it is for me to hit a little dinky target a few meters away. Of course, I could probably hit the dinky target a few meters away so long as it was in front of the mountain I'm blowing up, but that doesn't always count. So yeah, control, not my strong suit. So I worked at it. You would not believe how damn friggan hard it is to make a leaf float in my palm. Sure, I could make one fly through the air at mach 5, but have one hover? Not so much. That proved to be my biggest problem.

Now, Seals were something the Academy barely touched on. They basically taught us how to write exploding tags and storage Seals. We weren't trained or tested on them, just introduced to the idea and given a brief summary of what other seals could do. I might as well tell you now, that these aren't the kind of seals that go "arf arf," eat fish and balance balls on their noses; no, these were extremely complex arcane formulae that had the potential to do just about anything. Me and Bob being Me and Bob, we latched onto the idea and learned how to make our own. They were essentially the same as your basic summoning circle. Lots of runes and mystical keys to put your will into. I'd later find out that yes, that's exactly where summoning belongs and it's a whole lot easier here than how Bob remembered it. Of course, this time we're summoning critters that expect to be summoned and so they're a lot more agreeable to the process. By the time we were done with the Academy, I could write a sealing scroll in my sleep, scribe an exploding tag with my eyes shut, and do a whole bunch more tricks I picked up.

It wasn't until a few years into the academy that my three favorite aspects of ninja life converged. We were learning of the formation of the village, _again_, and learning about the so called "great clans" _again_. We got to the part about the Senju and something caught my attention.

"What?" I said, interrupting Mizuki (another douchebag, but of the more modern variety).

"Stop interrupting, Naruto!" he scolded

"Did you just say my family name?" I asked. And he had. I sat down in my seat amazed. "Holy crap, I'm related to the first and second Hokages. How awesome is that?"

"Troublesome," said the half-sleeping pineapple-head beside me.

"Where are the rest of my family?" I asked.

"Shouldn't you know?" asked one of the civilian born students. I shrugged.

"I'm an orphan. All I've got is the Old Man and Bob and they're not really related to me," I said. Mizuki was getting annoyed with the interruption, but I didn't care. I was too hung up on the Uzumaki being related to the Senju. "What else did the Uzumaki do?"

Shikamaru grumbled about me causing trouble but answered me. "They were known for their Sealing abilities, red hair and incredible vitality."

"With the exception of the hair, we rule," I said.

"They, along with their village, were destroyed in the last war," Shikamaru finished, much to my disappointment.

Ah-and now we're back to me being an orphan. But it explained where I got my talent for sealing and my ability to recover from just about any wound in a few hours. At least I had somewhere to start now when it came to my family. Damn, I'm good.

There were a few things I did not excel in; two in particular that I particularly sucked at, the very opposite of excelling. Taijutsu and the Replacement techniques were those two. Granted, Bob explained that wiggling your fingers around was no different from my, and my predecessor Harry's, tendency to use Latin-esque phrases to get off spells, but I could never get the hang of it. I guess my training with Bob precluded me from being able to excel your basic ninja skills. But taijutsu was different. I sucked at it even if I practiced. And I did practice. Both Bob and the Old Man said it was important to learn, since the First Law is _**Thou Shalt Not Kill With Magic**_ and the Old Man just didn't want to see me get killed. So I tried, really tried. But that friggan douchebag Sasuke kicked my ass every time.

You might have noticed I use douchebag a lot. Bob used it once to describe some guy name Kemmler that he used to know when we talked about how necromancy was a **Bad Thing** (yes, bold capital letters folks), and I've been using it ever since. It is awfully appropriate for so many people in Konoha.

Well, while I could sometimes get a few strikes in, I almost always lost in the fights. If it had been an actual battle, I'd have come out on top thanks to my ability to heal and the fact that, according to Bob, I must have been weaned on Energizer Bunnies, whatever those are. But it was always based on points and I always lost. I wasn't even allowed to use my rings since the Old Man said I couldn't use them after the first spars we had in the Academy (Kiba went through a wall). I needed some training, and knew I needed some training. So, I went to the person who could usually tell me where to start.

"Bob," I said.

"Yeah, kid?"

Bob always called me kid until I was about 20, then he started calling me Boss.

"I need to find someone who can teach me taijutsu since I suck at it," I told him. Bob's eyes flashed in his "I'm thinking" way as he pondered my question.

"Okay, two ways we can go about this," he said from his skull. "One, you let me out for the night and I'll find one for you."

"I'm not so sure that's a good idea after last time," I said. Last time I let him out for a night the Konoha population increased severely nine months later and the Old Man wasn't happy when a third of his ninja force was on maternity leave. Yeah, Bob's a perv and not a good role model, but he's the closest thing I've got to a father figure.

"Okay, or two, we use the Map," he said.

The Map, otherwise known as Little Konoha, was very similar to something he had built with my predecessor, Harry Dresden. It was a scale model map of Konoha and the surrounding area right down to the trees, and since we're the Village Hidden in the Leaves and the First Hokage could make trees practically with a wiggle of his nose, there were a lot of friggan trees around. It also wasn't finished. There were sections I hadn't been able to map yet and there were people who could detect me when I went into it, and these people happened to live in two of the sections I haven't been able to map. The Uchiha and the Hyuuga both had eyes that could see chakra/magic when activated and years of experience have given the most skilled of them almost a second sense as to when to activate their eyes. This had lead to rumors of "chakra ghosts" living in certain districts when they spotted me using my Will to scout around through Little Konoha. Amusing how freaked out they got. The other sections I hadn't finished were Training Ground 44, Danzo's evil lairs and a few other places that I knew had stuff, but I wasn't allowed in.

The use was a little different. It could be used several ways. One allowed me to move my will into the map and explore as if I was watching close by a subject and I could move fast from one section to another. It was great for following people, tailing suspects and the like. I learned a lot about the city that way and it helped me to know exactly what I was missing on my map. That used a lot of power and took a buttload of control, so I couldn't do it for very long since my concentration tended to fail me. The other way was to use a tracer to focus my Will on what I needed to find and use a medium, often a specially treated sand or ore powder, to highlight what I needed. Worked well on people when you have a piece of them or something important to them (hair, prized possession etc...), but I was trying to find someone who I didn't know and I didn't know where they were or have any idea what they looked like. So, either way it was going to take a buttload of concentration and control, two things that are not my strong suit.

So after some consideration I decided to do two things: Let Bob out for the night, and use the second Map method. Bob would go out looking for someone who fit my criteria, while I tried with my ore powder. This wouldn't give me specifics, but would tell me where they were, and then I could send my will into the map and look for them that way.

The ore I used wasn't iron, it was primarily silver with some cobalt in the mix, not stuff you want to breathe in, but a whole lot easier to focus your will into than iron, which actually is best used for binding critters. The basic idea was that I focus my will on what I needed, namely a person to teach me martial arts so I didn't have to keep getting my butt handed to me repeatedly on a silver platter. I then spread the dust over the map where it would pull together in high concentrations where people who best fit the criteria I'm searching for, in this case: teachers and taijutsu.

In hindsight I should have been a little more specific. There were many, many people willing to teach taijutsu to your average academy student. I should have specified people who would be willing to teach _me_.

Did I mention I wasn't too popular with the general populace of Konoha at the time?

Needless to say, when I tracked most of these people down, they weren't too happy it was me who was asking. Others only taught their clan members the clan style. Three weren't even Konoha citizens, having been diplomats from other nations visiting. Many of the rest were already Jonin Instructors or ANBU trainers and thus were not able to devote any time to an academy student. So, in the end, it came down to three: a creepy guy in a green uni with eyebrows wider than most brooms; a creepy guy with glasses following the Old Man's grandson around; and an old pervert with white hair who spent a fair amount of time giggling as he stared through a telescope at the Konoha waterfall where the women like to bathe or outside a peephole to the women's side of the hotsprings, or, well, just about anywhere there might be nude or scantily clad women in Konoha.

So, being a naïve little kid, I went to the first guy.

"Hey, I need someone to teach me taijutsu," I told him. The man made a fist and screamed "YOSH" at the top of his lungs, causing birds a good distance away to burst into flight in fear.

"You have come to the right place! For I am the Azure Beast of Konoha: Guy Might!" the man said. "We shall begin with a light jog."

It was quickly apparent that our definitions of "light" and "youth" were very, _very_ different, thus with me ending up exhausted in a heap on the forest floor after the 3rd "jog" around Konoha. Yes, **ALL** of Konoha as in every street, alley, nook and cranny.

"It, uh, seems my, um, _youth_ is not as strong as yours is," I said diplomatically. "Maybe we can train later on when I'm stronger?"

I intended it as an escape line, but Guy seemed to take it as a promise.

"Yosh! We shall sign this pact in sweat! When you are stronger I shall seek you out for a most youthful training session," he said, fire in his eyes and a stern look to his jaw. Just for emphasis, he cracked a walnut with his fingers.

"Uh, sure, right, that sounds great," I said as I started backing out of the training area.

* * *

><p>Next I tried the guy who was always trailing after Konohamaru, the Old Man's grandson. That was a complete bust. He ridiculed me, put me down and made fun of me. So I gave him a kick to the balls.<p>

Needless to say, he was not too willing to help me after that, but Konohamaru was impressed.

* * *

><p>So I was down to one possibility: the hot springs pervert.<p>

I was lucky that he was still in the village, since I later learned that he only came visiting once in a while, even if he did work for the Old Man.

"Hey," I said without introducing myself. "I need someone to teach me to fight."

The middle aged man just giggled into his telescope as he watched the ladies play. So I stepped between them and the end of the telescope. The white haired pervert screamed in surprise as all he could see was one giant blurry blue eye.

"Hey," I said, a bit of a scowl on my young face.

"What are you doing here?" he asked, clearly annoyed.

"I need someone to teach me how to fight," I said again in an exasperated voice.

"I'm busy, brat, go bug someone else," he said waving me off. I was not going to be deterred.

"I just need some help," I said.

"My research is more important."

"Research?" I asked with a Spock-ly raised eyebrow. "Tell you what, unless you teach me, I'll make sure you can't get any research done while you're in the village."

"Yeah, right kid," he said as he vanished. And I'm sure that if I had been a regular academy student, he might have been right, but this guy made the mistake of leaving an orange book and a few hairs that stuck to a shrub from his long hair. I'd gotten pretty good at thaumaturgy, which was the art of making and tracing magical connections with people and objects and while I could do it without a specific piece of the target, having a bit of hair just made it easy. I had hair and I had plenty of trinkets to help me find what I needed. I tied his hair to a silver pendant and said the magic words. The pendant leaned in the direction of the hot springs. It didn't take me too long to find him again. Spotting him, I went over to a payphone. Putting in my coins I called up the front desk of the hotspring.

"Hello, Konoha Hotsprings," a woman said.

"Hi, I'm calling to report a pervert peeping on the women's side," I said. "He's got white hair, and a forehead protector with the symbol for 'oil' on it."

Less than thirty seconds later, a large number of angry women ran out of the hotsprings with wet hair, angry expressions and various forms of weaponry. It was clear they had dressed in a hurry. They then beat the crap out of the old pervert until he replaced himself with a log and escaped. I extended my will into my tracking device and found him over by the 2nd Hokage's pond.

I knew a phone call wouldn't work this time, so I pulled up my will and did the best veil I could. While most veils are intended to hide an object, I wanted to highlight it. So a moment later, the women came running angrily towards the old pervert when they noticed a glowing neon sign of Will pointing down to the man with the words "Pervert Here" in blinking pink letters.

I waved to him as the women attacked. With a glare at me, he replaced himself with a log again and took off once more. This time I found him looking through the window of the women's change room of the Uchiha Police Force. Specifically he was gawking at Sasuke's mom. While she was a very attractive woman, she was also considered one of the most dangerous women in Konoha. Running towards a payphone once more, I called up Police Headquarters.

"Hello?"

"Hi, yes, concerned citizen here," I said in a faux gruff voice. "There's a pervert staring at the police chief's wife in the change room. Thought you'd like to know."

Moments later, _both_ of Sasuke's parents were hunting down the old pervert as I waved to him as they passed.

This time I tracked him down to Hokage Tower, specifically hiding in the Old Man's office. I strode in with a grin on my face.

"Hi, Old Man!" I said waving hello.

"You!" the old pervert exclaimed as he pointed at me. "How? How did you always find me?"

"That," I said, wagging a finger at him, "is a _secret_!"

Xellos, eat your heart out.

The Old Ma Hokage couldn't help but laugh, having heard the story from his wayward student.

"So, tell me Naruto, why were you harassing Jiraiya?" the Old Man asked.

I recognized the name. Jiraiya was one of the Three Great Ninjas, the Sannin, which was short for a much longer name. He was the one who taught the Fourth Hokage and brought Toad Summoning to Konoha.

"Wow, I didn't know one of the sannin was such a pervert," I muttered, much to the Old Man's amusement. I looked back at him and shrugged. "I needed someone to teach me to fight, cuz I suck at it right now."

Looking back at it, Bob's insistence on honest reflection was pretty important. If it hadn't been for him, I probably would have ended up pretty hotheaded and been easily offended. Well, to be honest, I'm still pretty hot headed. Being able to recognize your faults is an important skill.

"Why did you choose Jiraiya?" the Old Man asked. I shrugged again.

"I used the map and looked for people who could teach me," I said before explaining the selection process. The Old Man knew of the map, since he and Bob talked about my skills and progress on a regular basis. "He was the last one on my list."

"Why was I last?" the toad summoner in question asked. He seemed vaguely disappointed by the fact.

"No reason, just were," I said. "So, when do we start training?"

"Why would I train a brat like you?" the white haired pervert demanded.

"Because you'll never get any research in until you do," I replied with a cheeky smile.

"Why did you pass up the others?" the Old Man asked.

"Well, green spandex man was the only other real possibility and I want to learn how not to die, rather than die from training," I replied. "Guy is scary."

The Hokage was trying hard not to laugh out loud at how well I got his student trapped. He nodded to his student with a sly grin. "Jiraiya, why don't you give him some pointers? Just enough to pass the exam."

"I was just hoping for enough to not have my ass handed to me, but that'll work," I commented.

Jiraiya, the great toad summoner, renowned for his prowess as a ninja, gave his sensei a poor-me-puppy-dog look, but agreed.

"Whoohoo!" I said, throwing my arms up in the air. Then I paused, remembering other things that had happened. I looked up at the Old Man with a sheepish look. "Is this a bad time to tell you that I had to let Bob out to help me with this?"

The Old Man looked at me with a tired expression, making him seem older than his years. He pressed a button on his desk. "Miss Haruka? Would you please prefill twenty-_wait_!-make that _fifty_ maternity leave slips? I think we're going to need them."

* * *

><p>I could go into specifics of how my training went, but it's not that big a deal. At first I sucked. Then I didn't suck quite as much. Then I sucked even less. Then I was average. Then I was slightly above average for my age and size. Then I was halfway decent. And that's when the old pervert had to leave town.<p>

I don't know if you've had experience with this particular brand of torture, but it's not fun and games. It involves getting punched, kicked, elbowed, headbutted, kneed and all other sorts of unpleasant activities until it takes a little longer for you to get punched, kicked, elbowed, headbutted, kneed or any of the other options. Then you start the process over again. Everybody who counted said I was getting better, but when you're sparring against someone who went head to head, with his teammates of course, against Hanzo the Salamander, you tend to feel the beat down fairly quickly. Luckily, I'm a quick healer.

All while this was going on Bob was teaching me about how to make potions. You see, Potions are more than just mixing a few ingredients together. You need a certain mindset for each one to reinforce your will into the liquid, do your little voodoo that you do so well, and try to make sure you keep things in check. Bob is good when it comes to helping me along, but when I started to show some ability at this, he stopped helping on those I was practicing unless he got something out of it.

"Nope," said Bob. He had the tone of someone who was obstinately crossing their arms and refusing to meet you in the eye.

"Why not?" I asked.

"If we're going to do this, you need to give me my jollies," Bob replied.

"I'm not letting you out," I said. "The Old Man was NOT please about last time I let you out."

He _really_ wasn't. That was twice I put a large number of his ninjas out of commission, although in general Kunoichi do get scarier if they've got spawn to protect.

"Alright, alright," he said from his skull. "All I want is-"

"And I'm not going to try to buy you another Icha Icha!" I said. Having tried this before at Bob's behest, I can honestly say there are reasons for age restrictions on certain items. Very Good Reasons.

"Let's make a lust potion," Bob said.

"What does lust mean?"

Hey, give me a break, I was seven.

Bob paused as if thinking up the right words to get his wants and needs. "It, ah, helps encourage certain behavior. The old pervert might like it, you can give it to him to try. Yeah, we'll give it to him for, uh, seduction missions. Right, that's it."

Once again, I was seven, and Bob was the closest thing I had to a father figure at the time and therefore I trusted him implicitly on most subjects. Scary, isn't it? It should be noted that Konoha doesn't do seduction missions anymore for the very simple reason that they don't work. It's so much easier to slip someone inside an organization and/or turn an insider to our cause that the relatively poor information gathered from pillow talk was considered a waste of effort. Really only Mist and Waterfall are known for seduction missions these days. For the rest of the shinobi nations the practice has been largely abandoned. But getting back to the story, we made a lust potion.

The ingredients weren't quite up to par. We had instead of high quality booze, an open, positively ancient bottle of cooking sake scavenged from a dumpster; instead of perfume, we used the petals of a dandylion and a few other weed blossoms growing around the base of the apartment building; instead of shredded lace we used some old wrappings from some kunoichi's outfit (which we later learned was a discarded piece of the Old Man's teammate's old outfit that hadn't been worn in 40 years); I didn't have dark chocolate, so we used cheap chocolate-flavor syrup, which coincidentally contained no actual chocolate; incandescent light instead of candlelight; I tried for a satisfied sigh, but got a depressed sounding one instead; I don't have a lot of cash, so I didn't use much and only tossed a couple of coins from Gama-Chan in the pot; and the only good ingredient was the ashes of the Masked Pervert's copy of Icha Icha Paradise. Don't ask me how I got that because I have been sworn to secrecy and Kakashi will probably hang me from my toenails if I tell how I did it at seven years old.

So, I mixed it all together, adding things when Bob told me to. The result was something with the consistency of a slightly thick drink with the look and texture of Coke. The soda not the drug; I might as well specify that now. We took out an old, empty sake bottle we found which happened to be one of the most expensive labels. The damn thing costs about two _thousand_ ryo a bottle. I was ready to go to class for the day, having not slept a wink between making the potion and practicing to stay alive the next time I fought the old pervert.

We all went outside to practice our shuriken throws about 10 in the morning. Little did we know that one of the assistant instructors (a brand spanking new chunin just promoted in the winter exam) was going through our bags and taking interest in what we had. We student had thought that it was one of us who was stealing our sodas and snacks (Choji having lead the investigation into this as he considered himself to be the most offended by the thefts), but damn. He chugged down what he thought was very expensive booze. Well, it wasn't. Not at all.

It just so happened that this was also the same day that the Fire Lord and his wife were visiting Konoha. They went to your usual tourist spots. Konoha is, by the way, I think the _only_ ninja village with an active tourism economy outside of the Chunin Exams. They went to see the mountain, the viewing stations, the great trees that the First Hokage built, the memorial to those ninja lost in battle, the Hokage tower and the Konoha Ninja (and Wizard) Academy.

Well, the Fire Lord and his wife were being escorted by a certain wife of a certain clan leader who just happened to be the Head of the Military Police in Konoha. Yes, Mikoto Uchiha herself was their escort (not _that_ kind of escort) around the village and she was dressed to the nines in a brand new kimono that complimented, but did not overstate, the Fire Lord and his wife's attire.

Now, inside the Academy, this chunin, his name was Mizuki or some such, (it's been so long I can't really remember, and he wasn't around for very long, regardless), this Chunin has just chugged a whole bottle of substandard lust/love potion in what appeared to be a very expensive bottle of booze. In walked Mikoto, the Fire Lord and his wife. Suddenly all three were being groped, dry humped and kissed by a blind and quite possibly insane assistant chunin instructor. Well, let's just say that Mikoto is one of the few women in that clan to make it up to Jonin in the last war and Tora the Cat is nothing compared to his owner. We little students were throwing shards of metal as this guy was chucked through a concrete wall, through our training ground, getting hit by all of us at least once, across the other side, followed by Sasuke's mom, who ran across our flying kunai and shuriken like they were solid ground only to pounce on the unfortunate thief like a hawk diving on an unsuspecting rabbit. A moment later, the Fire Lord's Wife was there, beating his head in with what looked like wooden training post. It should be noted that the Fire Lord's Wife is a rather large and round woman, and not normally interested in physical pursuits.

"Damn," Kiba said. "My Mom would have just set the dogs on him."

"My mother would have just cut him up and served him at the table," said Choji.

"My mother would have just used her assistants to drain every bit of chakra from his body then allow them to gorge themselves on his bodily fluids," Said Shino.

"My mother would have-" Shikamaru cut himself off. "Well, it's too troublesome to say how much worse off that guy'd have been if he'd groped my Mom."

There's a reason that the Nara women can motivate the men of the clan: they are very, very scary. So scary in fact, that Jiraiya won't peep on them, no matter how beautiful. He's perverted, not suicidal.

As for the girls, most of them were staring at Mikoto Uchiha with stars in their eyes. I think that's when most of the girls realize that Sasuke's mother figure was a serious ninja and that fan girls weren't his thing. I think we produced more high skilled and ambitious kunoichi in our year than the five before it and the five after it because of that little show.

After the assailant was non-responsive, Mikoto Uchiha stood up, daintily brushed herself off, straightened her clothes, turned to the Fire Lord and Lady and bowed politely.

"Now, after that interruption, if you would mind following me, we can continue our tour," she said.

This is a big reason I don't make love potions for people anymore, no matter how much Bob insists. This is what happened to a guy who used one and that's not even counting the blindness and impotence side effects of the potion. I don't want to know what would happen if they found out I made it.

* * *

><p>Once again, I don't own Naruto and I don't own the Dresden Files.<p> 


	4. Chapter 4: Clash of the Clans

Time passed and I was getting better and better at my magical talents. Potions were like second nature to me, so long as I had the right ingredients. I've discovered that certain places have better results than others. Most of my plants I can get from the Yamamanaka Flower Shop, and the Old Man will buy me alcoholic ingredients if I explain what I need them for. But there are some things you just have to get yourself.

This list includes, but is not limited to: ninja dog fur for canine fertility potions (a major source of my income); Uchiha eyebrows (especially good for adding fire elements or illusion aspects to potions; I think it's the eyes); Konoha Tree bark, specifically from those trees made by the First Hokage, for growth, spirit, longevity and camouflage; giant snake scales, used particularly in escape potions; flesh eating slugs for dissolving potions; Nara deer horns for medicines (I use the dropped ones, not the fresh cut ones, since those are reserved specifically for the Konoha hospital); Shikamaru hairs for relaxation potions; Uchiha fangirl sighs (remarkably easy to hear, remarkably difficult to trap for later use) for entrancement aspects; and a few other things of low supply. While most of these things are considered odd, they seem to work best. Off them all, Uchiha eyebrows are the easiest to acquire. Now that I'm halfway decent at martial arts, I just pluck them out in a fight with Sasuke. I occasionally pay for them from off duty members of the clan ("I'll give you 50 ryo if you pluck your eyebrows and put them in this bag"), but I suspect most of them think I'm just reselling them to fangirls. I would never, ever feed someone's obsession like that.

...Unless it was to my distinct and great advantage.

So I had just acquired a decent amount of fur from Akamaru's family to make a new batch of fertility potions that Tsume had ordered. Their numbers were going down and the other ninja dogs were getting on in years, so the Hokage suggested my services instead of the medical corps. Now, when making a fertility potion, you need a stabilizing element and an element for controlling the target. Part of that is just pure will when making the potion. The other half is a physical symbol of that idea. And who better than the Hyuga Clan to symbolize control? After all, they keep 3/4 of their population in virtual slavery at all times. If that's not an obsession with control, I don't know what is.

So, I dressed up in my sneaking coat. It's a long duster I ordered through the Old Man, who had his people make it for me. I then added more than a little protection and what not to the inside. The damn thing will block a Juken strike anywhere it covers, not to mention make kunai and shuriken bounce off without a mark. The Old Man was suitably impressed and ordered a set of robes made the same way. His hat was strong enough now to have swords break on it. Yeah, I'm _that_ damn good with seals and runes, and that was when I was only eight.

So, I wore my sneaking coat and crept into the Hyuga Clan Compound. Now, the clan head was, and is, a total putz. About the only people worthwhile in the entire Main Branch are his daughters and even then they're a bit strange at times. The one time I asked Hinata if I could have some of her hair for a project she started hyperventilating, turned red as a tomato and passed out in my arms. I didn't want to catch whatever she had, so I changed my approach thereafter. This time I was just going to sneak in and steal some hair from their brushes. Much safer for me, although the seal they enslave the Branch House with prevents the mojo from flowing right, so I needed Main Branch hairs.

I crawled along the wall, keeping my head down and made sure not to make the floor squeak. A little known fact, even to ninjas, floors squeak less if you move close to the wall, because that's where they have the most support and least flexibility. And if Hyuga don't know there's someone in their house, they aren't going to kick your ass. I made my way past the dining room where Putz-meister Clan Head was dealing with some other main branch men. Then I snuck into the change rooms near the bath. Now, while this would normally be considered peeping, I didn't think anyone would be actually bathing that late at night. The woman, I wasn't sure of her name, screamed as she realized someone was in the change room of the furo. This was an unsubtle command for every damn Hyuga to turn on their Byakugan and see me reaching for a hairbrush.

I would like to go on record and say that while their style is known as the Gentle Fist, they aren't actually gentle people. Luckily for me, the Hyuga Clan house was made with ricepaper walls, so the subsequent kick I got from Hiashi Hyuga sent me through the wall, out over the hedge, and into a koi pond. I got up after terrorizing the fish and started running away, but there is no damn way, no matter how awesome you are, for an eight year old to outrun a furious head of a ninja clan. He tossed me up in the air after realizing that his strike hadn't actually paralyzed me, then gave me a very not gentle punch to the solar plexus. Thank magic for protection seals! It was time to run and sneak and hide, most likely in that order. Actually, it had been that particular time the moment the woman screamed, but I don't always have the best reaction time. So I was on my feet and running. I punched downward with my kinetic rings and used the Newtonian forces to send me flying over the compound wall. Hiashi, being a jonin and all around badass when pissed, jumped the wall, followed by about half the branch house. I booked it, not that it mattered. I discovered that adrenalin is a very important thing; it allows you to do all sorts of thing you normally couldn't. Add a little magic boost to your feet, and you're able to keep ahead of all sorts of trouble.

Not so little known fact: the Uchiha compound is right around the corner from the Hyuga compound. Hiashi wasn't too hesitant to follow me, and where the Clan Head goes in a war-like maddened rage, pretty much the rest of the clan follows. So when I went over the wall, into the Uchiha compound, so did he. What neither of us knew was that this was the particular night that Itachi had decided to kill off his family. I didn't notice the bodies, (Itachi having been careful enough to drag them into the shadows,) but shadows don't stop the Byakugan. Another not so little known fact: Uchiha and Hyuga don't really like each other that much, so the they wasted no time ensuring that the remaining Uchiha were deeply in debt to the Hyuga clan by healing as many as they could, and saved those who would have normally bled out.

Hiashi, however, was entirely focused on me, so when I ran into a random building, so did he. I found out later that Sasuke was quite confused as to why I was running into his house. He was even more confused as to why there were Hyuga all over his clan's compound, but more on that later. I ran in the house and, in a moment of not quite wisdom, ran right between Itachi and his mother (the young man having already stabbed his father repeatedly; I think Freud would have something to say about that). The sword hit my duster, got tangled in the magically enhanced collar, but I didn't let that stop me. I kept on going because there was a much scarier man behind me. Itachi blinked, tried to understand where his sword went, and then was plowed over by Hiashi in the older man's attempt to get me. I made a right turn after exiting the back door and didn't stop running until I made it back to my apartment, Hyuga hairbrush in hand.

Out of a clan of nearly 200, seventeen survived, Sasuke the only male above age 2 with any hope of creating a new Uchiha generation in the future (save for Itachi, but that's a _LONG_ story for another time). Well, better than having them all die off. The Hyuga haven't let them forget it, but both tend to ignore my contribution.

I later found out that the woman in the bath was Hinata's mother. We eventually made peace about the issue, not too difficult considering how things resulted and the fact that, unlike just about _all_ my teachers, I'm not a pervert.

* * *

><p>Well, I'd been in the Academy for three, almost four years at this point. I had no hope of graduating early considering my incredible lack of ability to do anything relating to ninjutsu proper. Genjutsu, granted it wasn't great, but I could fudge it with veils and illusions and a bit of sleight of hand; Taijutsu, well, Ole Pervy Sage had helped me with that and promised to come back every so often so long as I kept my practice up, and I had.<p>

But Ninjutsu escaped me. I couldn't do a replacement technique to save my life. Instead I had reinforced my clothes, every set I wore, with special runes and sealing arrays that would let me shrug off anything but a direct headshot and I was working on fixing my fedora (ordered from something called Gato Industries), to be like a blast helmet. Those wonderful shielding seals protected me against heat, impact and slashing. Wind was easily countered with some alternate seals. When it came to combat, I bet I could have used magic to beat them all up if I pulled up enough energy, but that still didn't give me what I needed to get out of the academy. This had been a long standing issue with me that I'd tried to do over and over and over again.

I'd even tried some of the scrolls I'd "found" around town on other techniques. Sure, I could _shape_ the power, because that's no different from focusing my Will to create a certain effect. If I pulled up the right amount of power and focused my will a certain way, I could mimic the Uchiha fire dragon technique or call up water to hit someone, or make enough force and wind to knock someone over and/or slash them, but the finer details? Forget it. I'd probably be able to do some basic tricks that don't involve hand wiggling, but anything beyond that was beyond me and that left me at the bare bottom of my Academy class.

This was a problem me and the Old Man were trying to fix. I remember when he called me into his office one day after classes.

"Naruto," the Old Man said in a tone that usually precedes me getting chewed out about something. I let out a sigh as I slid into the chair across from him.

"What did I do this time?" I asked, pondering how I was going to be punished this time. It had been a year since Itachi's little rumble in the compound and I hadn't done anything _too_ bad since then. And hey, a whole bunch of people lived because of me! So it all ended up well.

"Nothing, this time," the Old Man said. "I've been thinking of your issues with ninjutsu and your talent for other skills and I've come to a conclusion that we need to make a better track for people of your abilities."

I perked up at this. This meant I might start my own plan.

"I've also been thinking about the glaring hole the Uchiha clan left," the Hokage continued as he leaned back into his chair and glanced at the portraits of those Hokage who went before him (and one who was both after and before him). "The Uchiha had a remarkably poor ability for completing investigations successfully. While many of the villagers are mourning their loss, the fact is that before the massacre, there were more complaints against the Military Police than open investigations."

"You're thinking of making me a cop's cop," I finished. "A Warden."

"Yes, something like internal investigations," the Old Man replied.

"Aren't I a little young for that kind of thing?" I asked. "Hell, I haven't even _graduated_ yet."

He looked down at me with a kindly expression, one that I'd seen grandfather's give their grandchildren. It was an expression I missed most of my nine years at that point. "Naruto, I'm proud of your accomplishments. While your..._methods_ have been... unorthodox, you deal with things in your own way, and have largely succeeded. You've shown a remarkable ability for investigations, no doubt from Bob's tutelage, and show quite a big of self initiative and a pleasant need to learn more, something that most teachers of any age appreciate."

"Thanks, Old Man," I said, and I meant it. People don't often talk to me that way. It feels nice to be appreciated, to be respected for your accomplishments. At the Academy, the other kids don't realize that my abilities don't set me behind them, it sets me aside from them, because my skill sets are very different. This has inevitably led to me being put down. I don't talk about it much, but it hurts, and I don't like bullies.

"With the vast majority of the Military Police dead, most of their tasks were pushed onto T&I," the Old Man explained. "They aren't truly equipped or trained for this kind of thing. Getting information from a missing ninja, sure! Interrogating a civilian who _may_ have been beating his wife, or cheating on taxes or participating in unfair business practices, and then still following police procedure? Not so much." He took a puff off his pipe. "Which is why instead of ninjutsu lessons, you'll be going to T&I for instruction with the few remaining members of the Police Force. You are going to have years of training shoved into only a few hours each day, five days a week. You need to promise me to take this seriously."

I began nodding like I had never nodded before.

"Not just yes," I said. "HELL YES!"

"Good," he said. "But that doesn't mean you and Bob can slack off on your lessons, either!"

"You kidding?" I asked. "With the money I make from one ninja dog fertility potion I can feed myself for a month! I've got plenty of time to train now! There's no way I'm not slacking off!"

"So you don't mind meeting your new sensei for police related matters?" Sarutobi asked me. There was something about his smile that I didn't like and I caught his eye for just a little too long.

There's an ability that wizards have, naturally as part of their training in my particular form of magic that creates a temporary bond between another person. It's generally called a Soul Gaze. Capital letters, folks. There's that old line about looking into the abyss and how it looks back into you, and that's a close approximation as to what happens. You see the other person for who they truly are. There's no pretense, no illusions, or lies. There's occasionally some allegory and such, but mostly it's pretty blatant. I really try not to do it. I just barely don't meet people's gazes, staring at their noses or foreheads. Bob said that I don't always want to really see how people are inside, because the illusions we have of others is gone, all a wizard and their companion in the gaze sees is unadulterated truth. You can never forget what you see in a Soul Gaze.

Never.

I looked into the Old Man and I saw him older, much older than he really was. He was tired, feeling brittle and wishing he could just play with his grandkid and wanted more of them. All the same, while he was tired and brittle, his skeleton was made of steel that gleamed in the light of his knowledge and experience. Instead of his robes, he wore a set of samurai armor made of fire, steel and duty. Standing behind him was a large ape as tall as he was who was also an unbreakable staff. The Third Hokage's core, the very center of his being was propped up by arms made of, wood, water, and a strange yellow light that seemed to vanish off into the distance, yet remain close. I looked beyond the arms and saw them leading up to the Konoha monument, with the arms leading up to the dead Hokages. His body was surrounded by an aura of fire that seemed to hold him up even though he wanted to do nothing else but enjoy his retirement. The fire was duty, but at the same time it was the Will of Fire, the code that Hiruzen Sarutobi was so proud of, so dedicated to, something he inherited from the First and Second.

He was old and tired, but he wouldn't let himself rest until he found someone to take his place.

He was haunted too. As he walked, one foot in front of the other, his feet fell on the head protectors of hundreds of people. Clan symbols crunched like gravel under his feet. The Uchiha clan symbol was ground nearly to powder under his heel as it tried to attack his ankles. A red spiral lurked like a specter over his left shoulder, stalking his every move.

He looked at me with pride and a little regret. I think there was something more that I missed. At the end of the Soul Gaze, Hiruzen Sarutobi leaned down and gave me something. Looking down I realized it was Konoha. The moment before the gaze ended, he set his hat on my head.

I snapped back to reality and shook my head. I glanced up at the old man and saw him feeling the same. I looked down at my knees.

"Sorry, Old Man," I mumbled. Truth be told one of the things I had feared was having other people see me. I wasn't really sure what they would see. I'd seen what other people did when they saw me coming. People moved out of the way as if I'll infect them with something. They refused to acknowledge my presence at times. Other times they went out of their way to put me down. I didn't know why. I was worried, really worried that after looking at me, at seeing ME, those special people would look at me the same way.

He didn't.

A moment after my mumbled apology, he was giving me a hug. I'd had praising pats on the head before, or words of encouragement, but no one had ever done that for me. It wasn't until just then that I understood how much I needed it.

"You have nothing to apologize for, Naruto," he said. It was just for a moment, but I understood what I saw.

I smiled and hugged him back.

* * *

><p>If you don't know, I'm really lucky. By that I mean REALLY lucky. I've never lost a bet. I've never lost a game of chance. The one time they had a slot machine at a place I used to go; I emptied it starting with only one ryo. I was really lucky the time I managed to earn a full spa treatment at the Hot Springs Resort in Tanazuka Gai, or whatever the place was called. I gave it to the Old Man as a birthday present.<p>

But eventually Murphy and the damn law of his had to come back to even the score.

Three days after our Soul Gaze encounter, the Old Man called me into his office. He was there behind his desk as usual with a dark haired woman sitting in one of the chairs across from him. He gestured for me to take the other seat.

"Thank you, Naruto," he said. "I'd like you to meet your new sensei in police matters."

I looked at the woman and realized that Bob's talk about Murphy's Law was very, very true. Something went wrong, and it always tends towards the worst possible thing. Sitting in the chair next to me was none other than Mikoto Uchiha, wife of the former head of the Military Police, Jonin of Konoha, the scariest woman in Fire Country.

Shikamaru might think his mother qualifies. Tsunade and Anko might also dispute that fact, but I stand by my statement.

This is a woman who raised a guy who grew up to slaughter almost his entire clan in a night.

This was a woman who could probably take out Jiraiya permanently if properly motivated.

And she was now in charge of my education.

I looked back at the Hokage with horror on my face.

"But you said you didn't hate me!"

The Old Man had the gall to snicker, but I didn't have to look at her to see the tick mark on Mikoto-Sensei's face at my statement. Just to be safe, I slipped on my shield bracelet.

* * *

><p>LAZY SQUIRREL'S NOTE: I'm alive! I'M ALIVE! Yes, I'm still here. I'm still working on these things, but other stuff has gotten in the way. So here it is, the next chapter. Oh, and I still don't own these things.<p> 


	5. Chapter 5: Dark Tracking, Part 1

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**Not Your Average Konoha Academy Graduate**

_Chapter 5: Dark Tracking, Part One_

By DireSquirrel

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* * *

><p>It ends up that Mikoto-Sensei is a lot cooler than I knew. She takes her work very, very seriously. While she hadn't been an active ninja since her marriage after the last shinobi war, she was only slightly out of practice when it came to police procedure and was quick to study up since she was the de facto head of the police department. And for two hours every week day, I was her apprenticeminion. I say minion because the majority of my training was fetching the right form for the right thing.

I know I'm not alone at this, but I HATE paperwork. It just had to be said.

It started out simple enough. We walked out of the tower and down the road to the nearest police office, which was just a ways down the road. Once there she ushered me into the office and sat me down.

"My name is Mikoto Uchiha, you may call me Uchiha-sama," she began, not realizing who she was talking to. I think I called her that once, if that. "While you are my student, you are not to prank the offices, disobey my orders or undermine my authority. This job is perhaps the most demanding in all of ninja life."

"But I'm not a ninja," I said, interrupting her. She scowled.

"And pray tell," she growled out, "what are you planning to be?"

"I'm a wizard," I said, as if it was completely obvious.

"_What?_" she said, clearly not expecting the answer.

"A Wizard," I replied.

"Not a ninja?" she asked.

"Nope. Shouldn't you have been told this already?"

"What, you wave your little wand around and cast spells?" she asked snidely.

"Hey! Just because you've got penis envy doesn't mean you can take it out on me!" I replied stupidly, point towards the katana strapped to her back. In hindsight, Bob should have delayed those talks about Freudian psychology until I was actually old enough to actually understand what I was talking about. I fully admit I've made mistakes in my time and telling the scariest woman in Fire Country that she had penis envy was one of my biggest up to that point in my life. Especially since I really didn't have the slightest clue as to what "penis envy" was, I'd just heard Bob use the term. Since then I've taken to reading up on any unfamiliar phrase Bob spouts before I use it. Anyway, do you remembering me talking about how lucky I was? Well, slipping on that shield bracelet is something I'd consider lucky.

It was powered and up in time for a dragon of fire to smash into it, followed by a distinct clang as her sword, thankfully still sheathed, clanged against the magical force protecting my sorry ass.

This was when I made my second mistake: Counterattacking.

Now, I'm not a precision based combatant. My spells are about energy, generally lots of energy. I put energy into things or take energy away. And it's important that all energy has to come from somewhere. Ninjas take spiritual and physical energy and combine it into chakra for ninjutsu, genjutsu and other techniques. Plants take energy from the sun and covert it into forms of energy that help them grow. Animals get energy from eating other things and breaking it down chemically. Energy is never destroyed, only converted. I work by using my spiritual energy to convert and guide energy from my surroundings into the effects I want.

I took the energy from the fire dragon jutsu and converted it to energy I could use and fired it right back as raw force.

"Forzare!" I screamed, thrusting out a hand back at her. Once again, I'm not precise. The wall of force caught the desk and threw it at her. The desk smashed through the wall and narrowly missed the prisoner in the cell on the other side of the stone wall that now had a very large hole in it.

"OKAY, OKAY! I ADMIT IT! I DID IT!" the prisoner screamed as he curled up in the corner of the cell. "I'LL TELL YOU EVERYTHING YOU WANT TO KNOW!"

That was when I realized that Mikoto Uchiha was not smashed. This would prove to be both good and bad luck. Good, because I hadn't killed anyone; Bad because my sensei, who had Replaced herself and placed the raw blade of her Katana to my neck, now hated my guts.

"Um...sorry?" I said, glancing directly down at the very shiny and reflective blade at my neck. "Maybe we could start over?"

"You are very lucky that was not my husband's desk," she hissed in my ear.

"I'm getting that," I agreed. I glanced to the desk in question just in time to see a chunk of stone fall from the ceiling to smash it flat, eliciting a squeal of surprise and horror from the prisoner. "Just out of curiosity, what is he in for?"

"Tax evasion," she replied a moment before she removed the blade from my neck. "Now are you going to behave?"

I nodded very, very eagerly to the very, very scary woman with the sword.

"Are you going to interrupt me again?" she asked.

I shook my head from side to side very, very seriously.

"Good," she said.

* * *

><p>My training continued. I learned about chain of evidence, police procedure, arrest procedure and all that. I learned about much, much more about doing my job in those few hours each week than I did during all those ninjutsu lessons that did nothing for me. Sure, being about to burn someone with a few wiggling fingers does have some appeal to the average person, but ninjas shouldn't be too proud of these chakra channeling terrors they've constructed. The power to channel chakra pales in comparison to the power of Arcane Arts.<p>

…

…

…

Too Darth Vader?

I know, but it's true. They might not have a Death Star orbiting the planet (unless that's what the moon is, which would be AWESOME), but they've got little wiggling fingers and they get little results. They have surprisingly little discipline in their work. Anything goes, anything is permitted. Not me, however. I have enough ability and power now to take out Konoha if I wanted to, but I've got the discipline to keep myself in check. I have rules that I must live by because my power is so much greater.

It's like Bob often quotes: With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility.

I'm not sure what it has to do with spiders, like Bob says, but it applies to me and I think it should apply to everyone. We're not islands; we're not alone, as much as it might feel that way at times. We have responsibilities to those around us. The more power we have, the greater the responsibility.

There's also that other thing that Bob says often: If you look into the Abyss, the Abyss looks into you. Don't play with monsters too often, or else you might become one. That's what some people think about guys like Itachi and Orochimaru, that something broke in them, twisted them.

I don't totally agree, (although an argument about them breaking the Laws could be made), but they haven't used their power responsibly in the past and I doubt they've changed their ways since.

Now that my rant's over, when it came to my training, not everyone was happy that I was being specially picked out for the Police. Most of those were the faceless villagers who don't even have names if you read the end credits. The other one was Sasuke.

Sasuke, the new "clan head" of the Uchiha (chosen because of some outdated clan rule that the clan head had to be male), was really jealous of me for training with his Mom. Bob described this as an Oedipus Complex; I didn't understand what he meant then, but I do now, and boy it was a big one. While I was learning how to track and report my investigations in hard copy triplicate, he was upset that I was getting the "attention" he thought he deserved. He started showing up begging for attention from his mother. He'd give me glares as I was filing a report about a shinobi practicing in a home sector late at night when all the pretty little civilians were sleeping. He'd follow me around the streets, glaring at my back and pretending he wasn't when I turned around. He did all this, growing more and more petulant and infantile as time went on. In short, Sasuke was turning into a whiny, needy little bitch.

About five weeks after the new training schedule had started, Sasuke confronted me before I could leave Academy grounds.

"You stay away from my Mommy!" he said, pointing at me.

I paused. I gawked at him.

"_Seriously_?" I asked incredulously. "You're about two months older than me and you're calling Mikoto-sensei '_Mommy_'? What, do you think I'm going to sweep in and marry her or some nonsense? And you're jealous? Seriously? I'll see you later, Oedipus, but I'm not your daddy."

And then he punched me. He's been kind of a douche ever since his brother killed his father and most of the rest of his clan. Now, granted, that does give him some leeway, but there's a limit. He's been trying to be the "big boy" ever since he was elevated to "clan head" even though his mother does all the real work and no one respects the kid. Oh, sure, they'll pretend to, but behind closed doors, they just snicker and laugh at the little putz trying to act all grown up. Most of the Uchiha still remember the kid who just a year before was stalking Itachi and bugging him for training only to get poked in the forehead with a finger. Come to think of it, Sasuke might be the reason Itachi snapped. I should look into that.

So, Sasuke Uchiha threw a punch at my head. I'd taken to wearing my shield bracelet all the time, so it was easy for me to just activate it, blocking the strike with a thought. That made him a little angry. He kicked and punched and growled at me, all (save for the growl, but that wasn't a threatening attack) were blocked by my shield. Then the idiot wiggled his fingers and spat a fireball at me.

There's this thing that we police inspectors like to call a chain of events.

Action: Sasuke confronts me outside of the Academy.

Action: I'm not at training on time, so Mikoto-Sensei comes looking for me.

Action: Mikoto-Sensei sees her son attack me after I called him Oedipus.

Action: I block defensively and state that I need to leave.

Action: Sasuke the putz spat a fireball at me when I had my shield up. It went against my shield, spread out along the edges and torched the very dry roof of the Academy.

Action: The fireball sets the dry, wooden shingles of the roof on fire.

Action: Mikoto-Sensei flushes the wood with a water jutsu so it only smolders instead of bursts into flames again.

Action: Sasuke gets a beat down from his own mum for having the situational awareness of a dead rat.

Action: Sasuke blames it all on me.

That was the chain of events that lead to Sasuke becoming an even bigger douche than he was before. Though it was entertaining to see Sasuke get his handed to him by his own mom.

Which was AWESOME.

* * *

><p>And so my training continued and I became well versed in the sealing arts, the detective arts and the arcane arts. I was one hell of an artist. Years past and I was harassed frequently by Sasuke, ignored by most of the teachers and many of the students, but I did my thing and I was happy.<p>

Then it came time to graduate.

"Naruto, do a Clone Technique," Iruka said. Now, I can't do precisely a Bushin, like most other kids can, once again that's the hand wiggly problem. However, after Bob's years of forcing me to practice, I can do some passably good Veils, magical illusions, and have them walk around according to my thoughts and Will. I made a few copies of myself and had them walk around.

Pass, with flying colors!

Literally. There were magical fireworks going off in celebration. I'm a ham like that.

"Naruto, do a Transformation Technique," Iruka said. Pretty much asking me to joke off, especially when he didn't tell me who to transform into like he did all the other students. Suppressing a smirk, I called on my power with my Will. I brought out a burst of light and held my fist up into the air as I struck a pose.

"Henshin!" I declared in a loud voice as the bright light seemed to vanish my clothes and replace my form with that of a very buxom young lady with long blonde pigtails. I gave a V for Victory as my clothes were replaced by strategically placed clouds.

Iruka voiced his displeasure, although I could tell by the blood dripping from his nose that not-so-deep inside he was impressed. Fridge logic reveals that to bit scary, but I didn't realize my mistake at the time. But really, with teachers like Bob and Jiraiya, what would you expect of me?

Grudgingly, Iruka passed me on that one, but here came the final bit: The Dreaded Replacement Technique!

"Naruto, do a Replacement Technique," Iruka said. Well, that wasn't happening. It must have been how I channel my power, but I just cannot seem to get the hand wigglies to work, and this was no exception. The log placed on the other side of the room stayed firmly where it was as did I on my side of the room. No matter how I wiggled my fingers, or how I focused my Will, I could never manage to get that technique to work. There was no near-instantaneous movement, no me vanishing to be replaced by a log or a chair or the idiot assistant teacher. Yep, this pretty much sealed my fate.

Funny how I have all this Great Cosmic Power and I can't manage something that most civilians who flunked out of the Ninja program could manage. But on the other hand, we all knew this was going to happen. No matter what Mikoto-sensei or the old pervert tried, I was never able to get the hand wigglies to work. Sure, what I can do no ninja has been able to figure out, so I'm thinking it's all about how things worked out in the early days of training. Lots of power, but early training sets me on a very different path from your average jutsu chucking ninja.

Iruka let loose with a blatant and overly hostile "Fail!" with extra exclamation. It was all a bit excessive, really.

This did not come to me as a surprise. Luckily for others involved, I'd done well enough on all my other tests to get a pretty damn good score. Really damn good score, actually, but there was one little problem with this: A failure at an Academy Technique was an automatic failure except in extreme circumstances. You could be a friggin seal master, but you mess up one of those hand wigglies, it's back to the Academy with you. The basic idea is that if you can't do those, you probably can't do others in the field, ergo, you're going to get somebody killed.

So I failed the first time. Big whoop. Knew it was going to happen. But still, it royally pissed me off when the douchebags paraded their shiny headbands around me like it was a big surprise. And low and behold, about two thirds of the douchebags were back in class a week later, having failed the secondary examination. Yeah, that's right, I knew all about the stupid tests. Good for me that I had an in with the Hokage.

"Hey, Old Man," I said as I stormed into his office without knocking. Standing in front of the desk was a tall guy with his forhead protector over one eye and a mass of spiky gray hair shooting up from his scalp. "I failed the exam."

"I know, Naruto," the Hokage said. "However, so long as you pass Mikoto Uchiha's test, you'll pass. Are you ready?"

"Hell yeah!"

"Very well, head over to her office and hopefully you will be ready," he told me.

"I was born ready!" I said with a thumbs up. "Believe it!"

To this day, I really don't know why I say that. A nervous tick, a genetic disposition, something like that. I'm not going to ponder it too much. Hasn't changed in all the years I've lived (even when I tried to stamp it out), so it probably won't matter now. Whatever it was, it sparked an inkling of amusement in the silver haired cyclops.

* * *

><p>So I headed over to the KPD HQ. That's Konoha Police Department Head Quarters, if you were wondering. As I said, I'd been spending my afternoons there for a while, now. I knew the basic routs from the Academy and my apartment and the Tower, but it always took me longer than people expected. I'm not a ninja so I'm not a roof hopper like most of them. I've come up with my own half-assed free running talent, but I'm not that great, nor as fast. Although, if I ever get that flying spell to work, I'll be faster than any of them.<p>

If I get it to work.

So I arrived soon enough, only a half hour later than I usually did, but that was fine since I normally didn't have lessons in the afternoon. I didn't really have a problem with not being a ninja, and I haven't since. Besides, pulling off a Gandalf or a Merlin is so much more satisfying.

You should know that pretty much all my popular culture references are based on stories and illusions from Bob. Bob, as an intellect spirit, remembers everything that ever happened around him. Everything. So whenever someone the next floor up was watching TV, Bob remembers is. When someone was reading a book out loud, Bob remembers it. When someone used him to help them with their magic, Bob remembers the whole process. And he's something of a free agent. There is no loyalty to him, as I think I've said before. He works for whoever has his bony home and right now that's me, although the Old Man does sort of have partial ownership for safety sake. So when I needed stories and things when I was a kid, Bob was there to help me out. I know all about the Lord of the Rings, Star Trek, Star Wars and other things. Actually, I probably owe my sanity to the guy.

Mikoto-Sensei, I never actually called her Uchiha-sama except those few random times, was waiting for me with an aggravated expression. Showing up and rubbing the back of my head, I apologized for being late. This has only made her patience with me shorter and shorter, not that I did anything too bad. I followed the rules...mostly. But this was to be my graduation exam.

"Sit down!" she hissed the instant I appeared in her doorway. She pointed to a seat in a corner and no sooner had I planted my bum on the cold metal seat, three other investigators walked in. "What do you have for me?"

"It isn't much," said the first investigator, a woman with dark blonde hair that almost looked brown. "We do know the parents weren't the ones to call in the child missing, that was the grandfather. He's 66, former shinobi and sharp as a tack even if he isn't as physically sound as he once was. He has a minor bloodline that lets him sense ferrous minerals, something that got passed down to his daughter and believed to have been passed to his granddaughter. He's got a serious limp he claims is from the 2nd War, made Chunin and then retired to in-village guard duty after getting his knee almost blown off with a Wind enhanced arrow. He said the girl was supposed to be staying with him for a weekend. When she didn't show up after school on Thursday, he asked his daughter, who seemed fidgety, yet claimed to be unconcerned about the daughter's disappearance. He gave the girl a few more hours and then called us."

"We went to the Academy, she's a first year, good scores, just barely not in the top quarter," the second said. "Seems she'd had some training with her grandfather. She was excited about visiting her grandfather. Left for home the way she usually did and hasn't been seen since. I asked all her friends and they said nothing was out of the ordinary. Seems she often spends weekends with her grandfather."

"And the parents?" Mikoto-sensei asked.

"We investigated the parents, they're heavily in debt, gambling on merchant trips," said the first investigator. "They're both civilians. The Father's an immigrant whose parents arrived after the 2nd War, we don't have much on him other than the basic investigation for traveling merchants. The mother's from a family going back to the beginning of Konoha, allies of the Hyuga back pre-village, though they haven't the same kind of reputation. Like I said before, her father's a former chunin, retired after his leg wound, but his record notes that he had exemplary service for his time. Saved his squad several times due to his bloodline, allowing them to escape ambushes and was on the fast track to Jonin until his accident. The mother married the father not long after the 3rd War but didn't have children until after the Nine-Tails attack." Her eyes glanced at me quickly, but snapped back to Mikoto-sensei when she let out a brief cough. I don't know why he looked at me, must have been nervous. "The family business was started by the paternal grandfather who worked hard getting supplies shipped in and the son married the missing girl's mother because of her bloodline. They mostly work moving iron and chakra metal bars in from the mountain mining communities which are then sold to Konoha blacksmiths."

"And the Gambling?" Mikoto-sensei inquired.

"Both of them in debt up to their eyeballs," the second replied. "I wouldn't be surprised if they'd sold the girl."

My eyes hardened at that. "They did _what_?" I asked.

The three full cops grimaced. Mikoto-sensei looked at me with a grim look. "It's illegal, though still common enough. Not so much in Konoha because we're very strict about such things especially with our bloodlines, but there are plenty of ways for them to pull it off."

"Did they leave? Don't you have to sign in and out?" I asked.

"True, that could help us limit the search a bit," Mikoto replied, flicking her eyes to the second inspector who nodded and vanished in a swirl of leaves.

"Um," I said. "Do you have some hair or blood from the girl?"

"Why?" Mikoto-Sensei asked.

"If I've got either something from her or something very important to her, I could probably track her down, or at least where she's been," I told her. We didn't really go over my special abilities, but rather tactics and police procedures during my training since I wasn't really being trained for frontline combat, but as an investigator. That and according to the Old Man's order, I'm supposed to keep things quiet in case someone wants to lift Bob, who is considered too valuable to lose.

"Explain," she stated, clearly an order. I glanced to the other inspector who caught the look and nodded to the Chief.

"I've got some other leads," she said, stepping out, leaving me and the Chief of Konoha Police alone in her office.

"I can trace connections between things," I said. "You see, everything has energy, and connections with energy. I can follow the stronger connections, or in this case, a specific connection and trace her down. Hair is good, blood better. I could possibly work with the parents' blood, but that's a bit more iffy."

"How so?"

"Everyone's 1/2 of their father and 1/2 of their mother, but the other half of each could potentially confuse things," I said. "I'll need some tools from my apartment."

"What kind of jutsu is that?" she demanded, clearly wanting that kind of thing for her department.

"Sorry, it can't be copied," I replied, well, so far as I knew. "I guess if I had the right person, I could train them, but that's still iffy. Hand wigglies and Wizardry are non-mixy things."

She looked at me blankly for a moment. A loooooong moment. Then she shook her head and grabbed her vest. "I'm going with you after we get the hair sample. One from a brush enough?"

I nodded.

Chief Mikoto told the inspector to get the sample and meet us at my place. The next moment was a swirl as the Chief dragged me off into the distance. The next thing I knew, we were back at my place. I walked upstairs and opened the door before formally turning around.

"I welcome you into my home for today," I said and felt the threshold welcome Mikoto-sensei into the room. A Threshold is more than just a doorway, it's a mystical formation of the people who live there. Things with Power, capitol P, are weakened if they pass through without an invitation. As Thresholds go, mine was pretty crappy. I'm 10 and never had any family other than Bob and the Old Man, and neither one counts for strengthening the Threshold since Bob wasn't actually alive or possessed of a soul and the Old Man didn't live with me. If not for my Wards that Bob and I set up all over the place and the fact that I've lived in the place for quite a while, anything from the Woogity side of the street would pass through it and might have felt something like panting after a quick jog. Otherwise, my Threshold wouldn't do much against ninjas except weaken a few ninjutsu and genjutsu techniques. It does nothing to the physical side of things. Inviting my teacher in might have been just a formality, but it was one that Bob had drilled into my head. Not to mention that it also allows her to bypass my wards as well, which actually could be pretty nasty at times. I don't invite just anybody over to my place for that very reason.

She looked at me oddly, but stepped in. Whatever she was expecting, this wasn't it.

My place is clean. Really clean. And I don't do any of it. Taking some advice from Bob, I made a brownie contract. That would be the small time faerie, not the junior Girl Scout. Brownies, in exchange for a few things, food mostly, clean up the house. Key is that they never do it when someone can watch, so I make sure that I am out of the house at least 4 hours every day and fill a few bowls with instant Ramen (Food of the GAWDS) to pay my debt. As a result, my house is always squeaky clean.

It's also very organized. I have my bed and closet in one room, my kitchen and "living room" with the TV and such together, and the third room, originally more of a walk in closet, was my mojo room.

"What is this?" my teacher asked, squinting into the shadows of the windowless room. I pulled on the hanging cord and the florescent light flickered on, shining light on little Konoha. It's a bit more complete than it used to be.

"This is Little Konoha," I said. I've had the opportunity to fill in some of the blank spots in Little Konoha since the Hyuga and Uchiha compounds were a bit more open to me, or at least I opened them up. I still haven't had the opportunity to map out all the deeper parts. There are tunnels and hidden facilities all through the ground of the village and not even the Old Man knew what all of them were. I gave her a brief explanation of what I was doing but she was clearly still pretty skeptical. I was just finishing it up when there was a knock at my door.

"Here it is, Chief," said the inspector, holding out the hair sample. "I took it from the brush in the girl's room."

"Great," I said, pulling it out of his hands. I didn't bother inviting him in and closed the door in his face. I'm pretty serious about who I do and do not invite in. I do not want to invite someone into my side of the wards if they are at all considering the thought of hurting me. Mikoto-sensei was one thing, but I didn't trust too many people. I turned and walked back to my Mojo Room and sat down in my circle in the room. My circle was very expensive. It was created by carving into the concrete floor and pouring molten silver into the runes and seals I incorporated into the circle. That is not cheap and I had to convert quite a bit of my Ryo to coins for the metal. That would technically be against Fire Country Law (The Fire Lord likes his money, he does), but melting coins was a lot cheaper than outright buying the same amount of silver on the open market. Doesn't make sense, but that's how it works. I tied the hair sample around a silver tuning fork I'd found somewhere. It was off key, but worked for what I needed it for.

Focusing my Will into the circle, the fork and the hair, I called up what I recognized as the lingering energies of the missing girl. This is a lot simpler said than done and involves a lot of things that just can't really be explained with words. Suffice to say, the hair was once part of the missing girl and that connection still existed. This was HER hair and I needed to trace that connection to where the rest of her energy existed. I grabbed a handful of iron filings and tossed them over Little Konoha, carefully keeping my inner focus on the girl. Somewhere, seemingly far away, I heard Mikoto-sensei gasp as the metal filings started to slither from the girl's home, where the hair had been separated from the girl, to the Academy where the filings seemed to slither all around as she went inside and out, up stairs and down. Continuing on they made their way half way to the grandfather's house and made a sharp turn west, over or threw buildings in a straight line, and then north, passing by the Hokage Tower before turning right and heading into a tunnel hidden by a secret door.

A tunnel I had yet to map.

I said a few words that were _so_ not for children most kids would instantly grow to age 16 just so the universe wouldn't feel bad about letting them hear them. That line of talk was quickly shut off by a knife hand to the top of my head from a certain Uchiha Head of Police.

"What, pray tell, was _that_ all about?" she demanded.

I pointed to where the iron filings stopped. "That's a hidden entrance. I don't know what's beyond there. I've tried multiple times, but ANBU always shows up and kicks me out."

"So where does that leave the case?" she asked, seemingly pleased that they at least had a lead.

"I actually have to be there, physically, to continue the search," I told her. "But at least we know where to start looking. And we know she was kidnapped by ninjas."

"Why do you think that?" she asked in her _I'm-testing-you_ voice. I glanced up and realized that she had already spotted what I was about to explain. I pointed to where he path to her grandfather shifted.

"This goes right over or through buildings, but I'm betting over, considering there's no windows or doors on that side of the building so far as I can tell," I said pointing to the line of iron filings. "She's an Academy student, there's no way she could have done this on her own. And since we didn't lose the trail where she was grabbed, that means she was still on the surface up to that point."

"Why don't you just use your technique to map the tunnels?" Mikoto-sensei asked me.

"I don't have that kind of fine control," I said suppressing a shiver, "yet."

And it was true, sending your will out that far without a guiding tool was beyond me at this point, not to mention more than a little dangerous since my body would be separated to a certain degree from my body. Bob told me of a time Harry got nearly fried when his spirit took a walkabout and only having Little Chicago as a buffer saved him from being KFC extra crispy. That reminds me, I think it's time for chicken ramen. But I digress. The Old Man made it VERY clear that he did not want me separating my Will from my body except in the safest of conditions. He didn't explain why, but I get the impression he was worried about something filling in the empty space while I was gone.

"You haven't even graduated the Academy yet, I'm not letting you into a tunnel like that," she told me. "I'm getting a tracking team and searching them."

"Any trail down there is days old at this point," I said. "Who knows how many other people have passed through those tunnels by now? You need me. Believe it!"

She stared at me for a long while, her face expressionless and perfectly schooled. Lots of people used to talk about how Itachi used to wear two masks, but only one was from ANBU. Seeing Mikoto-sensei stare me down, I could tell that she'd taught her son how to wear that second mask. She was... cold, I guess. Most people have some kind of tell that gave away at least some of their inner emotions. Mikoto-sensei could just turn them off and on like a lightswitch.

"Fine, but I'm bringing a team with us," she said after a moment.


	6. Chapter 6: Dark Tracking, Part 2

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**Not Your Average Konoha Academy Graduate**

A Naruto/Dresden Files Crossover

By DireSquirrel

Chapter Six

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><p>The team met us at the entrance along with the two inspectors and the one-eyed spiky haired guy. The other five ninjas were looked at him with confusion.<p>

"Kakashi? You're on time?" one asked in amazement and a bit of horror.

"huh? You say something?" he said, glancing up from his book.

"I told him to be here two hours ago," Mikoto-sensei stated flatly. The ninja in question gave her a wounded look. She glowered at him. "There's a girl in danger. She's six."

"And he's ten," a girl with three dogs just out of puppyhood said, pointing to me. She had long brown hair, facial tattoos and a chunin vest so new you could almost smell the packaging. "I know because he's been in my brother's classes."

"Oh, I'm guessing you know Akamaru and his pet?" I asked, eliciting a smirk from the girl.

"This is serious!" Mikoto-sensei snapped with a dark glare at both of us. "Uzumaki-san is assisting us in this investigation. Kakashi, have you talked with ANBU about this tunnel?"

"As far as I know, it isn't an ANBU tunnel," the one-eyed man replied. "Officially and unofficially."

Reading between the lines, that was when I pieced together his voice with his old ANBU mask. Smirking at the memories, I looked towards the entrance.

You wouldn't know it was the entrance to a tunnel if you weren't looking for it. It was covered in vines, but if you looked closely, you'd notice that not one of the vines was actually clinging to the wall over that spot. Years ago, when I'd first found the entrance, I'd seen someone vanish down this dead end and no one had jumped out. It wasn't too hard for a kid, with a shorter perspective on the world, to see the entrance and it had a clear seam along the edges of the wall. Pushing the vines out of the way, I triggered the button that opened the doorway. Inside was a tunnel, not unlike a sewer, but dry and without the scent such a place usually has, even years after continuous use. I knew because there were plenty of old sewer tunnels that weren't in regular use now that pretty much every house had been upgraded to modern plumbing and sewage pumping. The tunnels tended to be just water drainage for the rainy season. This, though built in the same style, was dry and cool. I also noticed a distinct lack of dust on the floor, cobwebs from the ceiling or other signs of disuse, suggesting that it was a regular thoroughfare.

"Damn," muttered the book reading ninja under his breath. I don't think anybody but myself or the Inuzuka heard him. He probably didn't know this was here. I'm not surprised. When I hinted about finding it, the Old Man didn't even seem to have known about it, though he chided me for trying to go into dark places because who knew what was lurking down in these half forgotten tunnels? Well, we were going to find out.

"Yeah, I used to get to the fork up ahead when ANBU used to stop me," I said.

"Use your technique," Sensei instructed me. I held up my talisman I had built out of a silver amulet, a chain and the girl's hair. Focusing my Will, I opened my Sight and _Saw_.

When a mage uses the Sight it is beyond normal sight, allowing the wizard to see traces of what was, what is and, occasionally, what will be. Magical power is bright, sharp and everything looks different to the world. You can also never unsee what you have Seen: it's with you forever. Focusing my will through the amulet, I could see the past for a second. The girl, with that just-out-of-toddlerhood cuteness to her, was unconscious, being carried by an ANBU. She seemed to just be sleeping, but I suspected it was something more.

There are all sorts of ways to induce unconsciousness. The most common for ninjas are genjutsu techniques, Illusions. They force the subject to sleep. Medical techniques both chakra based and chemical based can do the same thing. Then there's the time honored fist to the face sort of sleep, but that tends to leave more obvious signs of use. I'd suspect it was an illusion keeping her asleep. It's what I'd do with a spell and the most likely since it looked like they needed her alive for some reason.

"She went through here," I said, stepping inside. I watched as the ANBU turned and moved through the passages with practiced ease. He or she, it was difficult to tell, was very familiar with the tunnels. In hindsight I should have mentioned that she was being carried by an ANBU to my companions, but I was working hard to keep from looking directly at them. I was quite sure I didn't want to literally see the ghosts that haunted my companions, so I kept my Sight firmly on the trail.

We made it to the end of the corridor where we turned right. I was in front, using the amulet to give me directions, twitching in the direction I needed to go. Kakashi was next to me, seemingly bored, but I could feel he was tense. I had long since shut off my Sight. You should never use it for long and in a Ninja Village like this one, there are plenty of things I don't want to see. That's why you'll never see me venturing over towards where the Kyubi thrashed around or any of the many battlefields around the village. I hate ghosts and I've no desire to be able to remember one, in perfect detail, _forever_.

We made it past the first fork in the tunnel without being accosted by any ANBU. We were much further in than I had ever made it before when the Haimaru Trio, Hana Inuzuka's triplet dogs loudly announced we had visitors. They appeared, seemingly me to my pre-graduation eyes, out of nowhere, swords drawn, masks down and tense as they clung to the walls with their chakra.

"This is a restricted ANBU area," one said.

"Ah," said Kakashi lazily. "Are you sure about that? You see, When Miko-chan-" Mikoto-sensei bristled like an angry echidna at that nickname- "arrived to commission a tracking team, I happened to be there and over heard her talking about this, but for the life of me, I couldn't remember this haven't ever existed. And the Hokage doesn't seem to remember having it built since I left ANBU. So, that brings me to the question, how is this an ANBU facility if even the Hokage doesn't know about it?"

There was a very tense feeling in the air at that moment. So tense, in fact, that I took a few steps back behind the friendly Jonin with more skill than I. I might have a bit of a habit of biting off more than I could chew, but that doesn't mean I was stupid. No, far from it. Thinking it over, I backed up a little more so Mikoto-sensei, the Scariest woman in Konoha, was between me and the ANBU.

From the direction of the ANBU, radios crackled and something was said that I just couldn't make out from behind my two layered Jonin shield. An instant later everything went to hell.

Combat is a scary thing. I'm betting that's true for almost all people, even most experienced ninjas. Even a few seconds of it can have you panting, weak and exhausted even if you'd taken it easy up to that point. Ten years old, having kunai and shuriken thrown at you in anger instead of practice makes it even scarier. I watched as Kakashi and Mikoto-sensei went through the hand wigglies and combined their attack in the very small, enclosed tunnel. Fire and wind combined, swirling together to become an inferno. It was hot enough that I watched thrown shuriken melt in the air, only to wobble and fly into the tunnel walls where it sizzled against the concrete walls. There was a burst of smoke and suddenly three of the (I'm assuming) _fake_ ANBU were behind us.

"Jonin-shield no jutsu _fail_," I grumbled as I threw up my hand, spreading my fingers and letting my shield bracelet do its job. The ninja projectile weapons bounced hard against the shield. I slipped a hand into my pocket and pulled out a thin, carved piece of wood. I could have sworn the ANBU did a double take, and I know the Chunin tracking team did, but none of them doubted me when I screamed out my attack. Screaming attacks for ninjas isn't really a necessity, but they do it anyway. I, on the other hand, require the name of my spells as an added cue which helps me focus my magic in just the right way; in theory I won't always, but at this point I needed every bit of focus I could get.

"_Fuego_ bitch!" I snarled, sending out a rather large burst of flame from the tip of my blasting rod. The attackers quickly flattened themselves against the wall as the gout of flame used up the oxygen in the small hallway, the fakers receiving only minor wounds. I pointed to the next two and called out "_Forzare_!" Watching satisfied as they went flying backwards as the Force Spell hit them. Force spells, like many Wind spells and jutsu, are beautiful things because they simply cannot be seen with the naked eye. As such it is very, very difficult to defend against them, as these two ANBU discovered.

My attack must have shaken the Chunin out of their stupor, which I think was one of those illusions keeping them in place, because they started sending attacks forward. I was careful when I put up my shield because it's two-way on physical things. It blocks attacks from coming in, but it also blocks attacks from going out. I was breathing hard as the shurikens flew off my shield and clanged against the walls, lighting up the tunnel with the occasional spark. Hana's face was lit up by the sudden shocking light of a lightning ninjutsu from behind us, back where our Jonin-Shield was hard at work. I glanced over my shoulder and saw Kakashi punch his lightning covered fist through the chest of one of the fake ANBU. Now you understand why using the Sight all the time was a bad thing. That was something I didn't need to see forever, so it was good I'd shut it off before the battle. I understood now why Bob told me all those stories of wartime wizards going insane.

My chest was heaving as I blocked a sword strike with my shield. While I didn't feel the physical impact, as that was nicely distributed throughout my shield, the strike took a bit more concentration than normal. I might have a massive amount of power, but I didn't have a lot of experience in battle, the closest being spars in the Academy. Nothing prepared me for my first real battle. In hindsight, everyone who said I was too young to come along was probably right. The ANBU were fast, all three of them in front of us, really fast. I was able to protect the four of us pretty well, but they were attacking more and more and I could almost feel the impacts in my Spirit as the adrenaline ran through my veins in a heart pounding torrent. Gotta say, I was really happy that my fight/flight instinct was turned pretty well to Fight, because there was nowhere to go. I glanced over my shoulder again to where Kakashi and Mikoto were fighting the first ANBU we met. One was down, but more showed up.

Now, we were in a life or death situation, but there were seven things Bob had drilled into my head until I could recite them in my sleep. The Seven Laws of Magic were pretty important. In this case, the first was most important. THOU SHALT NOT KILL WITH MAGIC. Basically, when it comes to magic, you really need to want the end result, to _believe_ with all your soul that you have to kill someone. You have to believe it is the right thing to do. The more you do so, the easier it gets until you turn into a total monster. In Dresden's time, Wardens, wizard cops, would show up and separate your head from your body with a proforma trial. I had no desire for either outcome, so I wasn't about to break that particular rule. I had an idea, but it was not going to be easy for me. I mean, I not a precision based wizard, not then, not now. My idea was going to take every bit of precision and control I could summon up. Kakashi's arm channeled up his lightning attack and I borrowed it a bit.

"_Fulminas_!" I shouted. Lightning flew from Kakashi's arm to hit ever ANBU in front of us. I spun around and did the same to those fighting our chunin escorts, the electrical power arching off the Jonin's arm to hit them in the chests.

They flew backwards, bouncing off walls as every nerve pulsed with my spell. I fell to my knees. Concentration and precision take a lot out of me and while redirecting energy is my forte, I needed a LOT more practice if I ever wanted to do that more than once in a fight. I watched as Mikoto-sensei checked their necks. I didn't move and just tried to catch my breath.

"Unconscious," she said. She had her "emotion?-what-emotion?" expression on. I'm willing to bet she wore that a lot when she was a regular Jonin.

"Damn, kid," Hana said with an approving smile, though she too was heaving with the exhaustion that came from combat. Her three adolescent dogs came over and gave me a lick each, saying they approved of me. I glanced up to the Jonin who both nodded. Kakashi tapped his earbud and reported what had happened.

"Root? Maybe, not too sure," I heard him say. He leaned down and pulled the masks off one by one. "I don't recognize any of them... ...No, one dead, six unconscious... Understood Hokage-sama." He stood up and turned to us. "We're to continue in, but Naruto stays in the middle. Hokage-sama is worried that they'll kill any children now that they know their people have lost. He's sending real ANBU down all the other tunnels. Naruto, how long will they be out?"

I looked at them for a moment as my chest heaved. I balanced my body by propping me up with my hands on my knees. Turning my head I nodded. "A while I think," I said. "That was kinda spur of the moment."

"Good work," Mikoto-sensei said. Despite myself, I smiled. It wasn't often that she was so blatant with her praise. "Ready to go?"

I nodded, getting to my feet. I paused and pulled a scroll out of my pocket. I tossed it to the other inspector. "For the weapons. I'll feel a lot safer if they're unarmed when we leave them behind us."

"Good point," he said and quickly disarmed and sealed the weapons in the scroll, tucking it into a pouch on his chunin vest. I pulled my duster around me and concentrated again, sending my will into the amulet. I pointed ahead of us.

"This way," I said.

We continued on in silence, the Haimaru Trio in front, Hana and Kakashi just behind them, the Chunin around me, one ahead, one behind and one on each side and then Mikoto-sensei in the back, keeping an eye on our way out. It wasn't long before we came to a door next to a turn in the hallway. I pointed towards the door. "Through there," I said.

Kakashi nodded and summoned up a little lightning and fried the lock. He pulled out a special Kunai and slid it through the door, letting it swing wide. What we found will be with me for the rest of my life, Sight or no Sight. Cages, must have been twenty in total, ten on each side filled with children of various ages. All had the exact same hairstyle of hair, trimmed closely to the scalp in a not-quite buzz cut. They were barely clothed, given just the barest amounts to cover the genitalia and a bit across the chest. The clothes weren't rags, but they were simple, uniform, as if whoever gave them to the children expected no individuality. Their food, if it could be called that, was dumped into bowls on trays that slid into the walls.

"Shit," Hana said. Her dogs gave a growl of disapproval at the children being caged.

The girl in question was in a cell with four other kids who all seemed about the same age. She was huddled, her arms around her knees. I glanced around the room. I saw at least two Hyuga, neither one sealed, but both were my age or a little older. There was a girl I could have sworn was Ino Yamanaka's younger sister by looks. In an older cell, I saw a boy with dark hair and eyes who had more than a subtle resemblance to Sasuke, if he was a pale zombie-esque person instead of the spoiled momma's boy Sasuke was. He didn't even look up in our direction, just kept sketching in his pad.

"This is not what I was expecting when we took the case," the other inspector muttered. He glanced back to Mikoto-sensei. "What do we do, Chief?"

She turned to Kakashi. "Call it in. This is bigger than one lost girl."

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><p>To be Continued<p> 


End file.
